Developing children's capacity to learn is at the forefront of all endeavours in schools. Teachers strive to capitalise on a wide range of teaching styles and innovations to stimulate, motivate and engage their children to become "better learners". Since September 1999, the Centre for Science Education at Sheffield Hallam University has…

This paper reports on the outcomes of the first in a series of three systematic literature reviews in inclusive education. The aims include establishing what research has been undertaken in the area of effective pedagogical approaches to enable children with special educational needs to be included in mainstream classrooms, synthesising themes in…

Background: There has been limited research on differences in temperament between typically developing children and children with an intellectual disability (ID). Individual differences have generally been neglected in previous investigations of children with an ID. The present research investigated differences in temperament and social behaviour…

When a New York school district found a majority of its middle school students scoring below an acceptable level in four major academic areas, it tried many interventions, including a three-year experiment in single-gender classrooms. Although single-gender classrooms are no longer as common in the United States as in years past, recent…

There is a vast body of literature on school size but comparatively few high quality empirical studies comparing outcomes in schools of different sizes. This systematic review synthesizes the results of the published research from 31 studies on the effects of secondary school size from OECD countries since 1990. Overall the directions and patterns…

Objective: This study evaluates the efficacy, duration of action, and tolerability of methylphenidate transdermal system (MTS) in children with ADHD. Method: Participants were dose optimized over 5 weeks utilizing patch doses of 10, 16, 20, and 27 mg applied in the morning and worn for 9 hours. Following optimization, 80 participants were…

Elementary school children in three grade groups (Grades K/1, 3, and 5/6) completed either the auditory or the visual 1/9 vigilance task from the Gordon Diagnostic System (GDS) as well as subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Third Edition and auditory or visual processing subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive…

Small group work in EFL classrooms has been largely accepted as an effective strategy in the development of students' communicative proficiency in English. This acceptance has occurred despite a lack of research in key areas about what actually happens when students work in groups in real classrooms. This study examines both quantitative and…

We use several national surveys to provide a 50-year perspective on time spent on homework. The great majority of American children at all grade levels now spend less than one hour studying on a typical day--an amount that has not changed substantially in at least 20 years. Moreover, high school students in the late 1940s and early 1950s studied…

The first half of this article reviews literature on some of the unmet needs of gay and lesbian students in schools and highlights educators' attitudes and beliefs toward individuals with differing sexual identities. Although the majority of literature reviewed in this article does not portray educators as being supportive of gay and lesbian…

From the bleached blond hair with black tips to the intentionally torn clothes to the tattoo on her arm, Annie looked and acted like a rebel from the first day she set foot in the author's literature classroom. In this article, the author describes how the journal for literature class had been instrumental in finding out about Annie's life and how…

Young people in trouble can be seen as passive victims of circumstance who are in need of help; as individuals responsible for their own behavior who need to be punished; or as sufferers from medical conditions who require treatment. This paper will examine the history of policy relating to pupils with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties…

This study examined teachers' behavioral ratings of young children (ages 5 and 6) with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A study group consisting of 30 children with formal diagnoses of ADHD and a comparison group of 30 children without ADHD were developed using randomized matching procedures. Teachers of these children…

The authors work in a city local education authority Special Educational Needs Support Service with an Anti-Bullying Project that continues to develop effective approaches to dealing with bullying in schools. This paper describes the project's use of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) and reports on the outcomes of a large number of…

This article provides information for physical education teachers to use while teaching their students with autism in an adapted aquatics unit plan. Crollick, Mancil, & Stopka (2006) have found that activities such as running, cycling, or swimming can reduce inappropriate behaviors in children who are autistic. They recommend further that…